


The Gralea Affair

by eveshka



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Episode Ignis Verse 2, Gen, Prompto makes bad life choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 14:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 12,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16451840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eveshka/pseuds/eveshka
Summary: Given the events of Verse 2 in Episode Ignis, Prompto never goes to Gralea.Or does he?What if he had?It would have probably gone a lot like this.





	1. Prologue

When Noctis had said he was stealing a Niflheim airship and chasing Ardyn down to rescue Ignis, Prompto had been all for it.But then they'd had to make an emergency stop for fuel and a few repairs, and curiosity overtook them.

They'd broken in to the facility easily enough, moving through hallways and laboratories until they'd entered a room filled with over thirty greenish tubes. Tubes that were filled with something that had left Noctis cursing and Prompto dumbstruck.

Alarmed by the reactions, Gladio pushed through and past both young men, then came to a surprised halt in front of one of the tubes. “The hell?”

The tubes, after all, contained exact replicas of Prompto.

 

Silence fell over the three men, and Prompto staggered towards the nearest tube, hands outstretched. As he rested his palms against the clear surface, Noctis walked up behind him and put his hand on Prompto’s shoulder. “Prompto…”

“That’s me. They’re…me. They’re all me.”

Beside them, Gladio was poking at the computer, frowning at the screen. “It’s calling them clones, but I don’t know of who. Maybe you’re the original? Vitals are good, though. Just looks like they’re ready to be freed.”

“Does this mean… I’m one of them? A… Niff? Are all Niffs actually clones?”

Noctis squeezed Prompto’s shoulder gently. “Doesn’t matter. You’re Prompto. You’re my best friend, and that’s that. We’re gonna go get Iggy back and then we’ll come here and free them. I promise.”

That’s good enough for me, Prompto had thought at the moment. They’d be back and he’d have siblings.

 

Prompto sighed as he hit the accelerator of his appropriated snowmobile to try and speed past the memories. He’d had such hopes, and then Noctis had walked into the Crystal and everything changed.

Oh, he didn’t blame Noctis. He didn’t blame Ignis. Hell, if Prompto had been presented the chance to be the one to sacrifice himself? He’d have taken it and never looked back. So, no. Prompto didn’t blame anyone for that.

 

He did blame that soldier who hadn't let him go with Gladio when they’d split up. Someone of his talents would be more useful in Tenebrae, his ass. Prompto might not have had the full training before they’d left, but he was more than capable now. So, sure. He’d put his talents to use by going back to that facility and rescuing the others that looked like him while Ignis recovered and Gladio rebuilt Altissia.

Maybe they’d be able to shed some light on Magitek, and the Empire.


	2. Chapter One

As far as ideas went, Prompto Argentum had to admit this was not his greatest.

Sure, going back to the Magitek Facility to rescue his doppelgängers had sounded easy enough, and it might have been, save for one tiny detail. Just a small thing, a trifle, really.

Just a dropship filled with MT that happened to accompany Verstael Besithia himself that had arrived about an hour after Prompto had. Nothing too big.

Prompto had been given enough warning to hide under a desk in the room filled with the tubes, and that was about it. He had no idea how many MT were with Besithia, or how long the man planned to be there.

Luckily for Prompto, the dropship filled with MT left, and only Besithia remained.

Unluckily, Prompto was crammed under the desk and he couldn’t figure a safe way out without Besithia noticing him.

The way he looked at it, he had two choices: Stay under the desk in the hopes that the other man left before his legs went numb, or pull his firearm and come out ready to kill.

Except, Prompto had to admit to himself, he wasn’t much of a killer.

It became a moot point when Besithia moved to the desk where Prompto was hiding and stepped on him.

 

Prompto yelped in pain, and when Besithia stepped back in surprise, the young man burst out of hiding, pulled a pistol from the armiger and promptly fell flat on his ass because his left leg had fallen asleep. It hadn’t kept him from keeping his target in his sights… he just didn’t have any dignity in the doing so. Then again, dignity was for people like Ignis.

Besithia actually started to laugh. “So this is what became of the little lost lamb stolen from me so many years ago. Returned to the flock at long last, though perhaps in great need of support from family he never got to know.”

Prompto got his feet under him and glared at Besithia. “Only family I need’s scattered because of you.” He’d started to read the research logs, seen that Besithia was behind this facility.

Prompto had known what Besithia had looked like; Ignis had made sure they’d all known the faces of the major players in the Empire after Chancellor Ardyn Izunia had ‘rescued’ them from the wrath of Titan. And this sour-faced liver-spotted smarmy-smiling asshole was the mastermind behind the MT menace. “What did you do old man? Clone me before someone rescued me? Did you rip me out of my mother’s grasp because I fit into some megalomaniac vision?”

The old man laughed, a dry and raspy sound that chilled instead of warmed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh, but one filled with menace and promise of malice. “Clone you? Good grief, no, boy. You’ve got it quite reversed. You are a clone of me.”

The nose of the pistol wavered and dropped for a heartbeat before Prompto reseated his grip on the weapon and leveled it on the old man once more. “Bullshit. I’m not you. You’re… you're old. And an asshole. And… and… you’re an evil mastermind.”

Thoughts ran through Prompto’s brain faster than he could speak them, emotions swirled through his adrenaline and burned themselves out in the light of his sky-blue eyes. “I’m not. I’m none of those things.”

He settled his grip on the pistol again and glared at Besithia. “Take it back. You take it back right now.”

Besithia’s smile was placid. “I’m not the one holding a gun on a defenseless old man.”

Prompto almost lowered the weapon, but the tiny little Ignis in the back of his head made a sound and the blond rallied himself. “Fine. I’m you? Prove it.”

“Easily. Open file 00/a and read for yourself. The password is solheim.”

 

He was torn. Turn his attention to the computer to read the file that Besithia had given him? But that would force his attention away from the old man and possibly leave him open to attack. But this was an old man. What could he do that Prompto, young and in his prime, couldn’t counter?

In the end, Prompto opted to keep the weapon trained on Besithia with his left hand and use his right to interact with the computer. He found the file easily enough, and the password worked on the first try. He sped-read, and then faltered when he saw the source subject. Verstael Besithia.

It was a fluid movement, a single step, a twist of the upper body, and Prompto was back in full command of his weapon, glaring down the barrel of a single upgraded Valiant. “Okay, so what, you created me to infiltrate Lucis and spy on the royal family for you? Is that how you did it? And when I didn’t work you had to make more?”

Besithia laughed in his face. “Oh my boy. My lost little sheep. You were stolen as an infant, whisked away before I could oversee your development, before I could put your fragile little body through the hardening process and make you the ultimate MT.” He took a step towards Prompto, and moved to reach up to the blond strands of hair that stuck up. “I still could. You’d have so much more experience to share and it would make you the perfect elite MT. Just allow me to-”

Prompto shifted his head away and shoved his gun in Besithia’s face, walking the man backwards with rage fueling each step. “You crackpot son of a bitch. What the hell is wrong with you? Is that all you see? I’m a clone of a madman hell-bent on what? World destruction? You know what, don’t answer that. I need to think this through.”

He took a deep breath and lowered the pistol, thoughts swirling in his head so fast he could barely catch them. “Just… stop talking. Please. Because I don’t know about you but only one of us is armed, and I’m not doing a damned thing you say. And what you’re going to do is sit down, shut up, and let me think.”

“Or you’ll what? Put a bullet in my brain? I’m your father, child. You’re here because of me. You should show me some respect, if not love and devotion,” Besithia retorted, unflinching when Prompto raised his pistol again and the barrel of the gun pressed harder against his forehead. “Now apologize to your father and perhaps he will see it clear in his heart to forgive you and take you under his wing. Teach you everything I know, and together you and I will finally end the cursed line of the Lucis Caelum together.”

A crystalline cold ran through Prompto’s veins and a pale blue tint fell across his gaze. “Fuck you.” The pointed reply ended with a bullet to Besithia’s brain and Prompto lowered the pistol, looked at the old man who had crumpled on the floor, and barely turned away in time to throw up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I just couldn’t leave you guys with only the prologue. ❤️


	3. Chapter Two

Two hours. It had taken Prompto two hours to pry himself away from the far wall where he’d plastered himself. Two hours to stop screaming inside his own head and send the Valiant II back into the Armiger where it belonged. Two hours to lock away his panic and fear and absolute certainty that someone was going to come barging into the room, brought by that single ricocheted gunshot.

Two hours to fake something remotely close to normal.

 

And it was shattered when a snide voice came over a speaker in the room. “Oh you _are_ perfect, aren’t you? The ideal of cold killer MTs, capable of shooting your own father. Oh, well _done_ Prompto. Well done indeed.”

Prompto spun in panicked circles at Ardyn’s voice, casting a brilliant blue gaze around until he saw the camera in the corner. It shifted, seemingly as if turning to regard him fully, and Prompto could almost see Ardyn at the other end of the thing, watching with that smarmy smile of amusement on his lips.

“Yeah? Well, watch this, asshole.” The Valiant II shimmered into his hand and without much thought, Prompto put an end to the camera with a solitary shot.

 

Shooting an electronic device had somewhat dulled the previous shot in his head, and Prompto sent the pistol away once more, straightened his spine, and cast a look around the room. When he found no more cameras, he allowed himself to relax. He needed to do something with Besithia’s body, needed to cover it, something. _Out of sight, out of mind,_ Ignis used to say when they hid things in Noct’s room instead of actually cleaning up. This wasn’t any different, right?

He couldn’t leave the body in the building; he knew that much. Meat started to smell after being left out, and a body was, more or less, meat. So off he went in search of something to help him dispose of a body. It didn’t even occur to him how bizarrely surreal the entire moment was as he trudged through the facility, looking in room after closet after room.

It was another hour before Prompto found a tarp and made his way back to the room with the other him selves in tubes, and rolled the dead man up into the tarp. He then slowly dragged the now-heavy tarp out into the corridor, down the hall, and outside to the frozen snowbank off to the side.

 When he was done, Prompto bent over and rested his hands on his thighs, cast a dark look at the drab green bundle, and shook his head. “I’m sorry I killed you. I should have left you for Noct.” The words were bitter on his tongue, and he rose and turned away, steeled himself, then walked back into the building and closed the door behind him. He returned to the room (he was going to call it a lab,) walked back to the workstation, sat down, and began to read.

 

After three hours of sitting in an uncomfortable chair, Prompto decided that he needed to get up, move about and work through what he’d read. Besithia may have been the one who had initially envisioned the MT concept, but there was no way that what he’d documented should have worked. What Prompto had seen of the Scourge-infected? They’d been nothing more than mindless creatures with only the instinct to kill.

But MTs? Those were totally different. They seemed to take orders. Hell, some of them simply stood guard and didn’t move until someone attacked or bumped into them, and then they turned into precision killing machines.

It was beyond any rational thought that Besithia had come up with a way to control the Scourge on his own. No chance whatsoever. There was something else at work, some other catalyst that contained the Scourge that infected these beings and made it controllable, made it useful. He just didn’t know enough about the Scourge, and didn’t have the benefit of Ignis’ intellect to draw from.

Prompto scrubbed at his face, ran his fingers through his hair and decided to go look for something that might pass as living quarters and a source for food.

 

He found a whole damn cache of meal replacement bars. The flavors ranged from lemon (tasty) to chocolate peanut butter (edible,) through birthday cake (he _could_ choke that down,) to strawberry delight (yeugh.) While he was pretty sure there wasn’t any delight in that flavor, he also knew that to reject it outright was a bad idea. Food would quickly be going scarce, and if Prompto was eating these things, that meant someone else might have a hot meal instead.

(Months later, he would finally taste one of the strawberry delight bars and realize that he had indeed been right, and there was absolutely no delight to be found within it. It had nothing to do with the fact that it was past its ‘best by’ date.)

Food sourced and stashed in the Armiger, he turned his attention to needing drinks. While he was positive he wouldn't find anything overly familiar, he came to a ramblingly surprised stop in front of a machine filled with a drink that was very familiar indeed. Row after row of Ebony sat pristine in the machine, and he resided his hand against the glass and smiled sadly. “Man, wouldn't Iggy freak if he saw you.”

He considered breaking the glass for a moment, but then noticed the scanner on the front of the machine. He removed his wristband on a whim and pressed the barcode against it.

The machine whirred into life and deposited a can in the hopper. Prompto cheered in disbelief and did it again. And then again. And once more.

 

It took Prompto twenty minutes to empty the machine and store the Ebony cans in the Armiger, and while he knew the only person who could put things in the mutual-share portion of the Armiger was Noct, Prompto considered those two or so hundred cans as all belonging to Ignis. He wandered a little bit and found another machine full and took three cans back to the lab with him.

 

Prompto had never been much of a coffee drinker, and the first can wasn’t quite repulsive, but he totally didn’t see the appeal. At least not until he looked up and realized that three hours had gone flying past while he’d been drinking the cans and reading the archives in the computer.

So that was why Ignis always drank Ebony. Cool. Prompto left the workstation, retraced his footsteps, and collected three more cans before he returned to his reading.


	4. Chapter Three

Several hours later, Prompto was wired, and he wasn’t certain that it was all to be blamed on the Ebony. Sure, some of it was caffeine, but the rest of it? Probably the rush of adrenaline that hit when he realized that he could very probably free these other himselves with very little difficulty.

But for that, he needed to come up with a way to take care of them. He needed to secure clothing and beds and more supples. Needed to track down medical kits in case some of them fell ill. Needed soft foods that were easier to digest than strange meal bars. Needed…. Prompto’s thoughts hit a glitch and his train of thought not only derailed, but hit the tunnel wall.

He needed names.

 

He sat back from the computer as if it had shocked him, lifted his gaze to the figures in the tubes, and stared openmouthed. There were twenty-three of them, and according to the computer, twenty were viable. He couldn’t just call them by numbers. That was so… impersonal and videogame-ish. They were people. Like him. And oh! He needed to know what day it was when he finally released them, so he’d be able to celebrate milestones and even birthdays.

Should he release them all at once? Or in stages? His mind swirled around the possibilities because he was only one Prompto and they were probably going to be more than he could handle at once. Okay, so release them in sets of five. Then the first five could help with the second… and by the time the last five were released, all of them would be able to make the process easier. He’d just have to take extra care with the first five, but he could do that.

Right. Prompto got up, stretched, and decided to take another walk and find somewhere that everyone could live first. Maybe clothing would be there too. Because really, he needed a shower and a change of clothing before he did anything else. And they’d need clothing too.

 

It took him a little while to find the residential area, but once he did, he realized it would be perfect.

The doors had opened to a rather modest living area with several doors that led off to smaller rooms with bunk beds set four to a room. There weren't quite twenty beds, but Prompto could work with that. Sixteen beds and twenty-one bodies. He'd make it work, especially if any of them were like he was and didn't mind sleeping on the floor.

Now he needed to come up with clothing… Prompto looked around and found a few promising cabinets. He opened one, grinned, and gathered up a bunch of t-shirts and pants, then carried the lot back to the lab.

Food. Food. He still needed to arrange for food. Okay, he could do this.

 

Food turned out to be a little more difficult. He found the cafeteria, but none of the food was actually cooked. Yeah that was going to take a little more work but he'd manage. Somehow.

If nothing else, he could boil potatoes into a slurry of a soup. Right? That's the sort of thing Ignis would have made if he was sick or hadn't eaten in a while. He could do that too.

Hours later, Prompto had hit the proverbial wall and needed sleep. He didn't want to leave the others, so he curled up on the floor or the lab, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

 

He awoke with a jolt, a nameless terror choking at his throat, a memory of yellow eyes laughing at him from seeping black oily pools of darkness. Twisted and evil laughter rang through his head as he sat up and gasped for air that wasn't obstructed and wasn't poisoned with vile malice.

“The hell was that?” Prompto asked himself, and then shook his head to clear it of the memory of hard cold metal against his wrists. He wasn't bound to anything, wasn't broken or bleeding, aching or miserable. He was simply stiff from sleeping on a floor without a pillow. That's all.

He scrubbed his hands through his hair and then wiped his face free of sleep before he gathered himself to his feet and staggered down the hallway to the Ebony machine. Three cans secured, he returned to the lab and sat at the computer once more.

Prompto cracked open a can, tapped a key to wake up the computer, and started reading where he'd left off: wake up procedures.

 

“Okay Prompto, you can do this. Pick five and start the sequence. Aeration, nutrient flush, oxygen conversion, then freedom.” He'd read through the process sixteen times and if he read it one more time he'd go nuts. He could probably walk through the process in his sleep. Of course, it never once occurred to him that he wasn't reading Lucian.

He flipped a switch and watched the screen change, five symbols alighting in indication of which units were selected for the process. The first one from each row. Seemed fair. He looked up at them, bit his lip, nodded to himself, and then pressed the button to start the cycle. It would take several minutes for the systems to power up, and he could use that time to go get some food started, set some potatoes to boil and either make a soup or a mash.

Prompto looked up at the figures in the tubes, made a silent promise that he’d do right by them, and then slid off of the chair to leave the lab in favor of the kitchen. He had a lot of work to do and about three hours in which to get it all done and ready.

 

Cutting potatoes took longer than Prompto thought it would. At least, when one was cooking for more than one person. He himself could eat a decently sized potato by himself, but that was usually with something else alongside it, and potatoes were all he had at easy grab, so he’d decided six himselves needed nine potatoes. And he had tried not to obsess over how freaking weird that sentence sounded while chopping up the root vegetables, truly he had.

In the end, he dumped the bits and cubes into the water and set it to boil. Then he wiped his hands on a towel, saw that almost an hour had passed, and decided to go check on the first of his other selves to see how things were progressing. If he’d calculated correctly, they should be just starting the nutrient flush process.

 

When Prompto entered the lab, he realized he’d made one critical strategic error.

He hadn’t selected the first tube of each row.

He’d selected all of them.

Nine potatoes weren’t going to remotely be enough.


	5. Chapter Four

From his vantage point on the catwalk above the locker room, Prompto finally allowed himself to breathe. He'd been parked up there for twenty minutes, trying to come to terms with the fact that things had gone wrong.

He knew _where_ things had gone wrong, of course. It was hard to not know: it had all gone horribly wrong the moment he'd been in the ruins of Altissia and decided to release the other himselves.

That had not been Prompto’s smartest idea, and neither Noctis nor Ignis had been there to talk him out of it. Hell, if he’d mentioned it to _Gladio_ he probably wouldn’t be here now.

And now Prompto was momentarily perched out of sight of twenty human-ish MT hellbent on making it a literal case of bleeding heart syndrome.

He leaned against the wall, sighed, and didn’t dare close his eyes. _You’ve fucked this up good and proper, Prompto. How the hell are you going to get yourself out of this?_

 

The process had gone smoothly, too smoothly. And how was the young blonde supposed to know that the release process was broken? Or maybe _it_ wasn't broken, but broke _them_.

He’d been so excited, too. The fluid had flushed, the tubes had lifted two thirds of the way, and the figures had started to move. They’d slid down, landed on the floor and sat there like lost children, blue eyes blank of understanding when he’d tried to speak to them. They’d understood the ‘come here’ motion he’d made, though, and had crawled out of the tube housing, made their way towards him and ventured slowly to their feet as he encouraged them.

Fifteen minutes later they were chasing him down the hallway with murderous intent, insanity or Scourge burning their eyes violet-red, and Prompto could only flee for his life.

 

They hadn’t even been awake for an hour and Prompto was faced with the realization that there were more than twenty MT in the building that looked like him, and all of them wanted him dead. He wasn’t sure how they knew he wasn’t one of them, and that was a set of thoughts for later. Right now, he needed to figure out what he was going to do.

If it was really Scourge, the answer was clear; kill or be killed. He didn’t want to kill them, but if they were infected? There wasn’t any coming back from that. Not without the Oracle to heal it, and she’d been gone for a few weeks now. His only real option was to be faster and meaner and he hated it. Besides, wasn’t it a sort of suicide? Killing a clone of himself? He wanted to throw up.

_Okay, Prompto, get a grip. You’ve got to figure out what to-_ A klaxon started ringing with loud and annoying sounds, flashing lights and… water? The sprinklers were going off…? _What the hell? Oh shit, the potatoes!_ In his single-minded panic to flee the lab and the other himselves, he’d completely forgotten that he’d left the potatoes cooking. That meant they’d burned and the smoke detector had sensed enough to set the building system off.

In the room below him, the metal units began to move.

_I’m dead. There’s no way I’m getting out of here alive._ Prompto stared down at the moving armored MTs and felt a sense of dread fall over him. Hands down, this had been the worst decision of his life. And now he had to pee.

 

_Well, this is a piss-poor situation you've found yourself in._ The voice in the back of his head sounded suspiciously like Noctis.

_Indeed. In a wee bit over your head._ Ignis.

_Yup. Urine trouble now._ And that one? That was all Gladio.

 

Sometimes Prompto wished his imagination wasn't quite so spot-on.

 

He reached up to scrub at his face for a moment to try to clear his head. _Okay, first thing is to get out of this room and find a bathroom. Then I’ll be able to think._ Blue eyes scanned around on his level and he sighed when he saw an air vent. _I’m not some masked wall-crawling hero, but as Ignis would say, ‘needs must,’ right?_

Creeping his way to the air vent was easy. Getting it open was an entirely different task made harder by the fact that Prompto was keenly aware that underneath him was a milling mob of MT that were armed and all _he_ had were his wits, his good looks, and a full bladder.

It took way too long to get the air vent pried open, and he climbed up into it as quietly as he could. He didn’t bother to close it behind him in favor of speed because as many times as he’d seen people crawl through air ducts and such in movies and video games? He wasn’t convinced the structures would actually hold his weight.

The metal felt thin and entirely too wobbly and he held his breath a few times when the duct work seemed to make too much movement underneath him. But he slowly worked his way away from the room with the MT and prayed to the Six that he could make it back to solid ground safely.

Shiva had been the patron of Nifelheim, hadn’t she? Cold and hard and unforgiving against Lucis’ Ifrit? Lovers torn over the fate of mankind, she sacrificed by her own dogmatists because she’d dared to reach to Ifrit in a change of heart. And like the gods, the people too had been doomed.

And here he was, technically a child of both, crawling through a claustrophobic wobbly air duct and he was resorting to thinking about deism instead of the fact that he _really had to **pee**_.

And then, as if right on cue, the ducting gave way and Prompto fell.


	6. Chapter Five

Awareness returned to Prompto with a jackhammer of sensory input. Alarm klaxons were going off so loudly he felt it in his teeth, and he was soaking wet from the sprinklers which were dispersing foul-smelling water from above. He was covered in bits of ceiling and insulation from his impromptu trip through the air ducts, and he was bleeding from various scrapes and scratches.

And he really, _really_ had to pee.

 

He sat up slowly, shoved sodden hair out of his eyes, and checked himself for major injury, but didn't think he’d broken anything. His back hurt, but he had just fallen eight or so feet onto a desk on a platform… and by the looks of it, that had been the luckiest place he could have fallen. Another few feet and he’d have landed on a small set of stairs.

“Yeah, okay. Gotta find a bathroom. Then figure out what to do next.” He picked his way out of the wreckage of his best hope for escape and got to his feet, carefully making his way across the office and flattening himself against the wall as he cracked open the door and peeked out.

Wet hallway, exit sign, a couple of doors that looked promising, but no enemies. _Okay, let’s do this._ He slipped out of the room and headed down the hall while he tried to ignore the effect the disgusting smelling water was having on his bladder.

The first door was a closet for office supplies. The second looked like a classroom. The third had a bank of deactivated MTs in various states of disassembly and that gave him the shudders. The fourth door had a row of computers now likely useless for water damage, and when he turned the corner, he scrambled to get through the nearest door before the patrolling MT saw him. It was a broom closet, but he didn’t care.

The slow thud of the MT’s feet was somewhat mitigated by the squelch of the water-logged carpet, and that certainly didn’t help Prompto’s predicament. He heard it move past the door and waited for ten whole seconds before he peeked out, saw the way was clear and beelined for another door in the hopes that it would open to some actual facilities.

On one hand, it did.

On the other, it was clearly a women’s restroom.

Prompto didn’t care; porcelain was porcelain.

 

 

A little while later, Prompto had made his way out of the soaked area and had huddled up in the back of an office for a bit of a break. The sprinklers hadn’t gone off in this area, which made him think that the fire had only progressed a little ways before the suppression system had managed to subdue it.

That was good, because he was desperately tired of being wet and all he truly wanted to do was find a bathtub, run a hot bath, and possibly even fall asleep while soaking.

Not gonna happen, but it’s a nice thought. Okay, Prompto, get your head in the game and maybe you can get out of here.

He roused himself from his napping spot and rummaged through the drawers in search of anything that might have proven useful. While he had the meal bars tucked away, he’d take anything he could get his hands on… including the fleece blanket he’d just found folded in a drawer. It was warm and dry and he was still damp.

He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and slipped out of the office.

 

It was both good and bad that the facility wasn’t terribly large. Two residential areas, one central hub that may have been intended to be a recreational facility, a single mess hall, the admin wing (where he’d found the blanket) and the small maze of rooms that made up the main lab.

He’d found several external doors, but all were sealed and unresponsive to his barcode. That was probably due to the fact that the facility was on lockdown due to the MT he’d been carefully avoiding for the past several hours.

He’d counted twenty humanoid Prompto-MT units and at rough estimate, forty fully mechanized. The twenty humanoid ones could be handled easier; they weren’t armed. The only real threat they posed to him was if they ganged up on him and Prompto wasn’t going to let that happen easily.

The armored units on the other hand… those were going to be a real problem. They weren’t connected to a hive mind or anything, and as far as he knew, the armored units operated independently. Different units had different armaments, and Prompto was going to have to take those out sooner rather than later. He’d pushed his luck just getting to a desk that had a map of the facility; getting back to the control lab to try to undo the lockdown was going to be a nightmare.

He shoved the map back into his pocket, tugged the blanket around himself a little tighter, and paused in thought. There were scissors on that desk, and if he could find a cord and a stapler… he rooted around for a few moments before he found a set of headphones. That would do.

He cut the cord away from the headphones and sat for a moment, poking holes in the end of the blanket. A quick in and out of the cord and then he tied the blanket around his neck like a cape, throwing it over one shoulder so his arm was free to summon his weapon. “Prompto Argentum, Assassin. Working in the dark to serve the light.”

He’d meant to try to cheer himself up with the reference to his and Noctis’ favorite video game, but in that moment it struck him as entirely too damn close to the truth. “Right,” he sighed. “Gotta do this so Iggy and Gladio can yell at me for it later.”

He drew the Valiant II from the armiger and stepped out of the office, this time in hunt of an MT.

And for all his fighting since Insomnia fell, for all the daemons and monsters and MT he’d taken down before… he was suddenly extremely aware of how alone he was, and how much he’d relied on his friends in a fight.

This was going to suck.


	7. Chapter Six

Suck was, admittedly, an understatement. Prompto flattened himself under a desk and waited for the MT to clunk past before he popped himself up, took aim, and blew the thing’s head off. _This sucks, blows, bites, and everything else in-between._ He sent away the pistol, grabbed the MT’s weapon and checked it for ammunition. _Okay, about half. Better than nothing, and I’d be foolish to just rely on what’s in the Armiger. Let's go._

He stepped into the hallway, weapon at the ready, and moved slowly down the hallway in search of his next target. He'd taken eight MT down, with Shiva only knew how many to go. And then he’d have to decide what to do with the others. The ones that looked like him. He hadn’t found them yet.

Honestly, Prompto wanted to capture one and see if he could retrain it. Him. Nature versus nurture, right? He hadn’t grown up to be a madman intent on killing everything in sight- he rounded a corner, took aim with the rifle and blew a MT’s armored head off. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best mental path to be wandering at the moment. He wasn’t homicidal. That would work.

He blew another MT to bits and kept moving. As he moved, he heard a crow of delight from his mental Noctis, complete with an ‘oh man, you are _killing_ it!’

 

Sleep deprivation. It was the only way that Prompto could rationalize the thoughts that had run through his mind. It had used Noctis' voice to equate this whole mess to playing a horror video game (because he didn’t remember Assassin’s Creed being this awful) and heading for the highest score, while boasting about being ahead.

 

High on the adrenaline of a nonexistent high-five, Prompto swung around the corner and froze as reality slammed back into him with the ice-cold certainty of a very naked version of himself standing in the hallway.

Prompto swallowed, figured this was his chance and lowered his rifle. “Heyas. Uh… you wanna… I dunno, talk?” He watched the other blond man, searching for a sign of understanding, of anything that might be an emotional response to his presence.

He (it?) started walking towards Prompto, and Prompto uncertainly held his ground. It wasn’t shambling or wandering like a zombie from a game… it was walking. Like a man. Like he did. There was hope, right? A little relief threaded through him and Prompto moved the muzzle of the rifle out of range and extended a hand. “Name’s Prompto. I guess you could say we’re brothers?”

The other ignored his hand, closing the distance and wrapping his hands around Prompto’s neck with emotionless murderous intent.

Panic set in and Prompto froze, disbelief wrapped around him as tightly as those all too familiar fingers. His left hand dropped the rifle and rose to claw at the other hands, and as he scraped raw fingernails against flesh, a voice rang through the air as loudly as if the man had been standing there beside him.

 

“Prompto, you’re up!”

Prompto threw his left hand out, the Valiant II materialized, and reflex handled the rest. Lift, press, fire. He didn’t need to aim. Not when steel met flesh as intimately as a kiss.

A flash, a cough, a grunt. The hands lost their grip on his neck and the body fell away to the floor, taking Prompto’s last vestige of hope along with it. That soft grunt of his own voice in death had held no emotion, nothing that had indicated any sense of self from the now-dead Other.

Prompto truly was one of a kind. Taken before whatever was in those tubes had been able to do what it did, erase, or change him. These other hims were really no different from the so-called undead zombies in one of Noct’s video games. Maybe Resident Evil. He’d only played that a little before Noct got ticked off that Prompto was a better shot. It couldn’t be helped, especially now that Prompto knew what he knew.

And okay, well, yeah. These so-called zombies could kill him in real life., but he still found himself mentally assigning points to them. Headshots took them out immediately, and got seven points, the most. Body shots were only three, because they were the easiest but didn’t kill. And sometimes it took more than it was worth, so Prompto tried to stick with the headshots.

Prompto’s hand lifted, the camera flickered into being, the shutter twitched, and then the black device was gone before he had a chance to think. One enemy down, the gods only knew how many remained. It was a battle survival by disassociation, and he needed that high score and proof that he’d done it, or Noct would never believe him.

He stepped over the body, squared his shoulders and called his pistol to the ready. Noctis had just announced that he was ahead by five, and Prompto couldn’t have that. He bent down, swiped the rifle and slung it over his shoulder before turning back down the hallway. “When I clear this level, Noct, you owe me. Maybe talk Iggy into making that vegetable curry.”

Another MT fell to a headshot and Prompto paused as he looked at the armor. These things were basically just him, right? Which would mean that he could equip the armor and get the defense boost. “Dude, no way… hang on, I gotta try something.”

The armor peeled away from the figure and Prompto made a face at the black tar, but it did work as pretty good glue. Torso, upper legs, head… he couldn’t make a full set from this unit; he’d shot it in the mouth. So he didn’t have the mask, but what he had was a start. His Armor Class was 5 now, and that was a damned sight better than Noct’s 2.

With a grin that could only be called manic, Prompto headed down the hall, a clunky jumbled mess half lost to the world around him.


	8. Chapter Seven

Hours? Days? Minutes? Hell, Prompto didn’t know. Time had lost much of its meaning to the blond as he fought his way through the hallways. He needed sleep, but didn’t know how to safely rest his weary body so he just kept firing weapons as he moved through the complex.

By the time he’d made it into the lab where everything had started, Prompto was surprised to see Noctis leaned up against one of the tubes, arms crossed. “There you are. Didn’t think you’d ever make it.” He yawned and stretched his arms up over his head in an exaggerated pose for a moment. “I’m tired from all the waiting. But we can rest in these things.” He jerked his thumb behind him at the tube. “Just need to strip down so they don’t realize you’re a real person. Armor won’t fit though.”

Prompto was too tired to even argue. He peeled the armor off and dropped it as he moved, stripping down to his boxers as he wandered to a waiting tube. He dropped those to the floor in front of the tube and stepped into the small enclosure. The glass or plastic or whatever it was slid partway down and he closed his eyes and slept.

 

When Prompto opened his eyes, he was naked in a half-closed production tube with green goo up to his ankles and took him a while to remember how he’d gotten there.

“Oh yeah, save point. Ha-ha. Let’s go, Prompto. MT to kill, people to see.” Noct was already awake and no doubt ahead in points. Again.

“Dude, you suck. Stop drinking the Ebony or I’m telling Iggy,” Prompto called as he scrambled out of the tube and foraged for his clothing. His feet were slimy, and he used his old underwear to wipe them as clean as he could before he threw it in a dark corner of the armiger and just got dressed. They never had to deal with this in video games. Therefore this wasn’t a video game. It was one of those escape room things.

There’d been advertisements for a new one coming to the Capital… one of those fully immersive facilities where you were ‘kidnapped’ and given a mild dose of meds to make you temporarily forget how you’d gotten there. That would explain why it was just Noct and himself- Iggy had taken one look and declared it the worst idea he’d ever seen for entertainment.

Which meant that Noct had probably set this up on his own and they were going to be in so much shit when they escaped… Prompto winced at the thought of Ignis’ ire as he pulled on his shirt. “Noct, Iggy is gonna kill us both you know.”

“Not if you hurry up and get your ass out of here. I’m already at the door. See you on the other side!” And then the voice was gone.

Prompto let loose a string of language that would have resulted in Ignis tutting disapprovingly, did up his pants and grabbed his weapons. Fifteen of the copy units remained, and then who knew how many armored MT. Hopefully he’d know when he was done.

“Okay, let’s do this.”

 

Four chocolate peanut butter energy bars later, Prompto was pretty sure this wasn’t an escape room, but an actual literal hell. He’d encountered and killed three more of the things that looked like himself, and more armored MT than he cared to think about. His feet were numb, the kitchen was burned out, and his head pounded.

He summoned a potion, used it, and slid down against a wall to take a breather. As the potion worked through his system, he decided he wasn’t feeling any better and grabbed a remedy and used that.

Reality slammed back into his head as the mild confusion was cleared away and he held his breath and stared at the wall opposite him. Gralea. This wasn’t an escape room in Insomnia, this was Gralea, that Magitek facility. And Noct was gone, swallowed by the Crystal and off gods knew where.

Prompto had come here to save his brothers but they were damaged by… he looked at his feet. Damaged by whatever it was in that goo, or the air, or… or something. He needed to get out of this place before he couldn’t undo whatever was happening to him became permanent.

“Wait a minute…” he reached into the armiger and fished around for a moment, then withdrew his hand. He clutched a small pendant on a chain. “Gotcha! Rainbow pendant!” He ducked his head, draped the chain around his neck and looked up again. “Okay, protected from confusion. Time to get the hell out of here.”

 

Of course, he knew he had to make sure none of the MT or his clones escaped. But now that he was fully aware of his surroundings and situation, hunting them down was far, far easier.

He donned another set of MT armor as a disguise, even managing to get the gloves and mask. It made it easier to move through the hallways and pick off the MT, though he was restricted to physical weapons and couldn’t use the armiger so as not to give himself away.

 

At length, he’d finally cornered the last three MT- two armored units and one clone. Hiding didn’t matter anymore, so stood with one Quicksilver in each hand, and took out the armored units with headshots. “Never miss,” he muttered, and then swapped the Quicksilvers off for a single Executioner and leveled it at the clone.

“You and I, we didn’t ask for this. And maybe in another universe, I’m you. Maybe you’re me. Maybe we’re a prince or a pauper or something that I can’t even wrap my head around.” The clone started moving slowly towards him, and he settled his grip on the weapon. “And maybe one day I’ll find peace about this. But I’ll never forget.”

And then he pulled the trigger.


	9. Chapter Eight

The blond man standing outside the burning building watched with blue eyes that had seen entirely too much death. He felt numb, lost, alone in the night in the place where he had been born, and it meant absolutely nothing to him.

He felt the heat from the fire, but there was no warmth. Saw the light dance on the snow, but felt no relief, no illusion of accomplishment. He was tired and heartsick and just done with it all.

Prompto moved only when he was certain that the building wouldn’t just dwindle down to smolder and that it was actually fully engulfed in flames. Then he headed for the snowmobile he’d stolen before, and started preparing it for a return to Tenebrae and most certainly a tongue lashing from Ignis if not a good fight from Gladio.

 

As he cleared the fence, heading away from the burning hulk of the facility, he saw a group of mercenaries as they moved towards him, headed by none other than Aranea Highwind. He waved and pulled up in front of them. “Hey Aranea, what brings you this way?”

“Prompto?” She sounded surprised to see him. “What the hell are you doing out here, pipsqueak? Where’s the big guy and the beanpole? And why do you look like shit? That facility… did you do that?”

He didn’t glance behind him. “Uh… escaping with my life, rebuilding Altissia, I’ve got no idea where Iggy is, and I’ve just spent the past I don’t know how long fighting to survive a massive fuckup. Which may or may not be why that place is on fire now. They died, I survived, and I don’t really want to talk about it. So can we go… and when we do, can you drop me off in Lucis? Maybe Meldacio? Wanna check in with the Hunters and see what I can do to help.”

Aranea blinked once, and he steeled himself for a series of overly perceptive questions, but they never came. Instead, she looked him over carefully and then nodded. “Okay, blondie. Whatever you say. First things first, though. You're using my shower and I'm not taking no for an answer.”

He almost sagged with relief.

 

The shower had been hot and refreshing and Prompto hadn't wanted to get out. But Aranea had bribed him with the promise of food, and he'd found himself seated by a small forced air heater, clutching a bowl of porridge as if his life depended on it. In many ways, it did, for it was the first food he’d had in a while that wasn’t a meal replacement bar.

Unfortunately, he’d managed five and a half bites before his stomach roiled and threatened to heave. He’d put the spoon down and just held the bowl, hoping that Aranea wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t eating.

She noticed, of course. He felt her sit next to him, though she didn’t touch him, and he looked over slowly, afraid of what she was going to say. Her grey-green eyes were focused on the contents of her own bowl, however, and she mashed the gruel with the back of her spoon as she spoke. “You know, when I was in command school, I saw a lot of young men come back from the war. I’m reminded of them right now.”

Prompto fidgeted, picked up his spoon and shoved a small bit into his mouth so he wouldn’t have to speak. Fortunately for him, she kept talking.

“Some made it through the war to die inside a bottle. Others only lived for the next hit, the next rush. Some just let go. The ones that really made it, they talked to people. And I’m not saying that you have to talk to me, Sunshine, but talk to _someone_.”

“Do you?” The words were out of his mouth in a bitter twist around the pathetic bit of rice behind his teeth.

“Sometimes,” Aranea sighed, then ate a mouthful of her own porridge. “But I’m not the kind of girl to kiss and tell. Look, we’ll be at Meldacio in an hour or so, which should get you enough time to finish eating and gather your thoughts.”

 

An hour later, he’d eaten half the contents of the bowl. She'd made an exasperated sound at him, collected the bowl and left him to sit out the rest of the trip in relative peace and quiet.

 

Meldacio was busy and crowded and it smelled almost as bad as Lestallum, but Monica was there and she’d grabbed him by the collar and just when he’d thought he was going to get an earful, she’d given him a fierce hug that lasted for several long moments.

He wasn’t past the shock of that when he was handed some gear, loaded into the back of a pickup truck, and thrown on the road towards some hunt with a couple of gritty Hunters and one shell-shocked Glaive.

It was a fight with monsters in the dark, but it was something to do and it got his mind off of Gralea. When they made it back, the two Hunters invited Prompto to their camping area, and after the first three drinks, Prompto didn’t care that it tasted as bad as it did.

But he couldn’t drink every night, as much as he wanted something to take the edge off, to dim the pain of memory and dull his nerves so the world didn’t cut quite so deeply anymore. Then one night a Hunter handed him a cigarette on the way out and Prompto had found his vice. Cigarette between the lips, he could shoot the head off of damn near anything that got too close to his boys.

He saved the life of one female Hunter who took him back to her tent and gave him something far more illicit to roll in paper and light before setting him on fire in an entirely different way.

But no matter what he smoked, what he killed, or how hard he fucked… the ghosts of Gralea screamed in his mind.


	10. Chapter Nine

Nightmares were becoming the norm and Prompto was sick, tired, and thoroughly over the chaos of his dreams. He was starting to think that this was his life now: fight, fuck, get high. It was a repetition that Prompto fell into, nay, almost embraced as his days dimmed into the darkness not only of the night but of the soul.

And that was so melodramatic he heard Ignis' snort of amusement in his head. "Shit," Prompto dragged himself out of the tent and went looking for something to do.

 

That something to do turned out to be a whole lot of lugging heavy metal across Meldacio so they could fortify the fence that kept the daemons out of the inhabited areas. It was good for his muscles if not his brain, and he found doing more and more pushups became easier over the weeks. He still preferred running, but that became more and more difficult as the enclosure filled with Hunters and survivors that Lestallum couldn't hold. They were running out of room and it was happening fast.

"Hey, Hot stuff, you think I can get a hand from you over here?" Prompto turned to see a young Hunter looking at him with a cocky grin. They'd met in a dark corner one night and Prompto had given the guy a blowjob that was supposedly the best the Hunter had gotten yet.

Prompto grinned and lifted an eyebrow. "Why? You gonna repay the debt you owe me?"

The green eyes of the Hunter flashed a dangerous glint for a moment and then the other man gave Prompto a salacious look and licked his lips. "Bring it over and find out."

The blond walked over and looked at the Hunter expectantly.

 

A few hours later, Prompto exhaled blue smoke and looked up at the empty sky. Again. It really was a Thing. Get high, smoke it hard, fuck harder, come down gracefully, repeat.

Or sometimes not. In this particular instance, Prompto was still as high as a Zu and he had no real intentions of letting this moment go. He didn't hurt, the Hunter had more than repaid that blowjob, and Prompto could almost forget that the world at large had gone to shit without Noctis.

 

And then his phone rang.

 

The device was nearby and he grabbed it, swiped to answer, and took a hit off the cigarette as he answered. "You got me. Tell me what you need to."

"What?" Gladio rumbled through the thiing. "Prompto, are you high?"

"Yeeeup." Prompto popped the 'p' and gave a bit of a laugh as he remembered Noctis making fun of how Prompto liked to mimic him doing that. "So did you have a reason to call or are you just trying to ruin my night. And my high?"

"You haven't heard from Iggy have you?"

"Nope." He popped his 'p' again and tried not to laugh too loudly. It was funny. And he was high.

"Damnit. I was hoping someone had. It's been two months."

There went the high. Gladio had officially killed it. Prompto crashed back into his own body and laid there on the hard stone. "I haven't seen him since they kicked me out of Altissia, Gladio."

"Fuck," Gladio exhaled. "All right. If you even remember this conversation, call me the moment you hear from him."

"Yeah, okay." Prompto eyed the cigarette and sighed. That had been a fairly expensive cigarette and Gladio had ruined it. "Ill call you."

Gladio grunted and the call ended, so Prompto dropped the phone back onto the bedding next to his waist. Sucked to be him. Granted, Prompto knew that in a few hours, he'd be doing it all again, and maybe this time he wouldn't answer his phone.

Oh who was he kidding. He always answered his phone.

 

 

As the days progressed, Prompto craved anything that kept him awake… or that suppressed all dreams and nightmares. For that, sex was good but drugs were better. A good enough high could keep all of the inner demons and daemons at bay, but a bad trip? That left Prompto edgy and trigger-happy for far longer than he wanted to admit.

This was a bad night. He’d been handed a syringe, and without giving it much thought, stuck it in a vein and pressed the plunger. The cold burn of the chemicals raced through him and his world fell aside to reveal the cold hard corridors of the Gralean facility burning around him.

Heat scorched the air, burned his lungs, and left him choking and gasping for breath as he staggered away, forced overtired legs to carry him away from the memory fused into reality that etched itself across his mind. He felt his hand shove into a face, saw nothing but an armored MT, and as it fell, some part of him resisted the urge to call the Valiant II and kill it.

A tiny little part of him managed to remember that he wasn’t there. It was a bad trip. He wasn’t there. It was a hallucination. He wasn’t there.

 

The air was cold around him, as if the Glacian herself had sapped the heat from everywhere, and Prompto drew his hands up his arms and tried to fight the panic that set in. Snow burned all around him, the flames reaching upwards like streaks of ice formed by water thrown and frozen in place.

He wasn’t in Gralea. He wasn’t. He was near Meldacio, safe. That wasn’t an MT… it was himself. One of the clones, reaching for him, crying. Begging for his life. He was the clone on the ground, watching as he called forth his weapon, as the cold and beautifully fashioned steel was aimed at him.

It wasn’t a gun; it was a blade. Prompto’s eyes traced along the wickedly sharp weapon and up the black-clad arm to look at the hard and angry blue eyes under black hair. Noctis. His best friend, his Prince, furious that he was an MT, a clone of the man that had wrought such destruction on Insomnia, blue eyes yielding to violet as Prompto raised a hand in defense and begged Noctis to do it so he could just be done with it all.

 

Reality slammed back into Prompto with the familiar tingle of a Remedy and the bite of an Antidote. He gasped, choked, bent over, and vomited bitter bile. When his stomach stilled, he looked up to see that he’d somehow managed to stagger out to the gatehouse, and it was Gladio that had used the curative.

Prompto had no dignity left. Cheeks burning on a face that otherwise held no color, he stood and tried not to look the other man in the eyes. “Thanks.”

“Prompto… what’s going on?” Gladio’s voice was softer than Prompto had expected, but even still, Prompto couldn’t bring himself to tell the bigger man how badly he’d failed.

“No big deal. Just a bad reaction to something. Won’t be doing that again, trust me.” _Whatever that had been, anyway._ He ran his hands through his hair, tried to make himself look a little more normal, and figured he failed at that too. “I’ll get out of your hair, let you get back to the watch.”

He managed two steps before Gladio’s hand caught him by the arm and spun him around. “Hey. Something’s eating you and I can’t figure it out.” His words were low, but there was a gruff edge to it that Prompto couldn’t stand.

Anger rose inside Prompto and he glared at Gladio. “What do you care? You went off to Altissia to help rebuild and left me behind. Do you even know where the hell Iggy is?” He yanked his arm free and turned his back on Gladio. “Just do what you do best and kill things. I don’t need you to save me.”

He ignored the sound that reminded him of Noct when he disagreed but didn’t want to say it, and stalked back towards the sleeping area where his bedroll was.

Behind him, he heard a grunt, then growled words that might have been a ‘fine, whatever.’ Prompto was too angry to care.

 

Later that night, however, his words echoed in his head. _I don’t need you to save me._ Clearly he did, because Gladio _had_ saved him. But humiliation and the fear that he’d fucked it up permanently kept Prompto from going to find the Shield and apologizing. Kept him in the bedroll looking up at the empty sky. Kept him awake until he finally lit a drug-laced cigarette, smoked it, and fell into the peaceful bliss of a semi-twilight high.


	11. Chapter Ten

Some weeks later, they’d cleared some monsters out of the Myrlwood, and it had gone well. Prompto still hadn’t learned his lesson before, and he had been handed a pill that he’d immediately popped into his mouth on the road back. When he woke up, he no idea where he was other than naked, sandwiched between two hunters he didn’t know, and his heart was pounding.

He lay there for a minute, trying to settle his thoughts, but his anxiety flew into overdrive and he pulled himself free from the others, found his pants and worked his way into them as he staggered to the door that turned out to belong to a hunter’s shack. Once outside, he lit a cigarette, took a deep pull on it, and looked out into the pseudo-night.

 

A small perfectly white dog looked back at him.

“Tiny? I mean.. Pryna?” He stepped off of the tiny concrete porch, flicking ashes onto the ground, but the dog stepped backwards, away from him. “Hey, it’s me. Prompto. Where’ve you been?” He put the cigarette between his lips, knelt, and waited for the dog to bound over.

She sidestepped, tilting her head as if trying to understand him.

He sighed, took the cigarette from his mouth and crushed it into the sand at his knee. “I know, that’s not me. But everyone’s gone. Last time I saw Gladio I was high, and I don’t know where Ignis has gone. I’ve got nothing but bad habits and self-destructive tendencies.”

The white dog barked once, sharply.

Prompto hung his head and nodded. “Yeah, I hear you. Luna’s disappointed. You’re disappointed. Noct would be stoically worried, Gladio’s rightly probably pissed off, and Iggy… Iggy would sigh and then tell me that the first steps to making things right would be to stop trying to hurt myself.”

There was a soft whuffling sound from the dog and he looked up to see that she’d moved to sit and watch him.

“Thing is… I’m lost, girl. I close my eyes and all I see is…” he took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. “Okay. No more drugs, no more alcohol. The sex is kinda hot, but… yeah, okay. I get it. It’ll take longer for the cigarettes… maybe I keep those a while. Gotta have one vice, yeah?”

She whined and he gave a soft half-laugh. “I know, they’ll kill me. But if not those, something will. I’ll work on it. Promise.” He heard noises inside the shack and turned to listen for a moment before looking back to the dog. “Okay, guess that’s my cue. Time to get back to the real world. Tell Luna… tell her I’m sorry and I’ll do better.”

The dog bounced up, front legs stiff in play, and barked once before turning and heading out into the darkness. Prompto watched for a moment and then turned to go inside the house, find his clothing, and start walking a better path.

 

Without the aid of alcohol or drugs, the nightmares came to him threefold. Add in withdrawal and Prompto Argentum was a very miserable man. He'd brought it on himself however, and he knew it, so he sucked it up and pushed through the sweats and the chills and the mindless terrors that haunted him through the nights.

He didn't socialize anymore, instead retreating to his campsite, where he secured himself up in a tree and slept upright. It was safer than waking up with a firearm half materialized in his hand and aimed at a fellow hunter. And he planned for the coming days like a man possessed.

He was a regular in the hunter’s shops, buying as many cigarettes as he could, storing them in the armiger against the days he knew were coming. Without the long days, plants were dying. Everything was going to go scarce. So he stocked up and hunted and packed what food and supplies he could scavenge along with the meal bars from Gralea, and he prayed to whatever Astral might be listening that things would get better.

 

His field cooking was nothing like what Iggy had done in the havens. Field cooking was two sticks and a fire and whatever he'd managed to catch sizzling and popping while Prompto kept his head on a swivel for anything that might want to eat him and his food.

He never ate what he cooked though. Meat was roasted, packed carefully when cooled, and then stored in the armiger. Prompto didn't understand it, but somehow food kept if it was prepared properly. He saved it for later, for Iggy and Gladio, when they needed it. He ate his meal bars when he remembered to eat, and instead of drinking or drugs, Prompto got his highs off of running and doing push-ups.

And he refused rations, always deferring to someone else, saying he'd just eaten, or he had something on the pot out by his tent. He'd slip away, eat a bit of his food bars, and do more push-ups, using the burn of his muscles to ignore his developing food aversion.

 

In an effort to do something less destructive, Prompto joined up with the Search and Rescue division that had formed in Meldacio. It meant working satellite to Gladio's group, but it gave Prompto a badly needed sense of accomplishment.

Until they'd gone too far out and had to camp the night. Jumpy and edgy, Prompto slipped off to smoke in a last-ditch effort to take the edge off in the hopes that he could tie himself up and go to sleep so as to not end up killing anyone.

It hadn't helped, and that was how Prompto was found halfway up an old radio tower. When Prompto snapped awake at the startlingly loud bellow from the Shield below him, it took everything within the exhausted blond to not draw his weapons and hold them on the source of the noise. “What?” He called down with resigned irritation.

“You just gonna sleep tied up there and not talk about it? You vanished for a month, Prompto. A month. And you come back haunted like you're half-ghost or something, strung out on whatever you can get your hands on. ‘M worried.”

Prompto just closed his eyes and leaned his head against the metal. “Go away, Gladio. You don't need to pretend. Noct isn't here.”

He ignored the protests of the man below him, and eventually Gladio left him to his tower. In the morning, neither man looked at each other, and that was plenty fine with Prompto.


	12. Chapter Eleven

Prompto had thought he had lived through the worst days of his life in Gralea.

 

He'd thought that killing clones of himself had been the hardest thing he'd ever have to do.

But he'd pushed through the Vesperpool area after clearing the Myrlwood and then getting to the Wennath Riverhead to rescue a family from the failing Haven. When they'd arrived, it was a sight that Prompto would never 'get over' and never _ever_ forget.

 

At the base of the Haven, staring them down were two daemons, though they weren't trying to get to the crying child on the Haven. To Prompto, it appeared as if the daemons were guarding the Haven, circling it as they faced outwards. Which meant those were her parents and not her attackers. He held up his hand, halting the others on the team and speaking softly. "Hang on. Let me..." He swallowed around the lump in his throat. "Let me try something, okay?"

The others looked uneasy, but they held back, watched as Prompto moved slowly towards the two daemons that had moved to stare unwaveringly at the group. "My name's Prompto, and we got word to come rescue some folks from the Haven here... I figure that's why you're here too. Protecting..." he glanced up at the Haven and saw long hair blowing across the child's face. "Protecting her from danger?" He hoped he'd guessed right, and then knew he had when the daemons seemed to settle. "I'm here. I'll see her safe. Get her to Meldacio and then up to Lestallum."

One step became two, became three, turned into Prompto racing up the Haven past the daemons and catching up the girl in his arms. She fought him for a moment, and then when he proved too strong, she went limp in his arms, sobbing for all as if the world had ended. He didn't wait, just turned and hurried down the sloped side, but when he came around again, it was clear that without thier child to protect, the last of her parent's humanity had given way to the daemons they'd become.

 

Fighting had erupted and Prompto pushed past them and hurried as fast as he could with the child in his arms. He only stopped when he got to the truck and had climbed into the bed, half-collapsing in the back with the girl still cradled. She was still now, too still for Prompto's liking, and he looked her over quickly. Her back was cut up badly, and there, a vicious scrape on her leg, black threading starting to form. Poison, or Scourge? He couldn’t know for sure.

He ignored the blood on his arms from her back, and resolve settled in his heart. “No, no, no, no. no.” Prompto repeated the word like a mantra, grabbing a potion and dispersing it over her. She wasn’t but seven, maybe eight. He’d promised. Another potion, and an antidote. She flinched and came around, and blue eyes opened slowly to fix on Prompto’s. “Heya,” he offered with a watery smile, but she cried out in pain and closed her eyes again.

He grabbed a Phoenix Down at the same time the team piled back into the truck. The spine of the feather snapped and the girl took a few shuddering breaths. “Guys, we’ve got to move. She’s a lot more hurt than I thought she was, and she’s not healing.”

Silence filled the moment, and none of the men he was with wanted to acknowledge the probable truth. Instead, the driver started the truck, slammed the door and they all had to grab on for dear life as the truck started barreling down the road at its top speed.

 

 

By the time they arrived at Meldacio, Prompto had used two more Phoenix Downs, begged and cajoled, prayed and pleaded. The fine threading on her leg had stopped advancing, but the girl was chilled with cold and covered in sweat. When Prompto passed her to the waiting medics, he handed over his very last Phoenix Down and made an older woman promise to have word passed to him about the girl. If she made it, he’d come back and personally take her to Lestallum.

As he walked back to the camp where he’d set up his tent, a female Glaive with silver hair ran up to him. “Mister Argentum, Mister Argentum! I’ve got word. Rumor has it that Ignis Scientia is in Lestallum. It’s good rumor, sir. Several people reported seeing a man that fit his description disembarking a transport from Tenebrae moving slowly but under his own power.”

 

For the first time in almost two months, Prompto’s heart lifted. Ignis had been seen in Lestallum. He thanked the Glaive, gave her his number and asked she let him know about the girl he’d left with the medics, and went to pack his belongings onto his motorcycle. He’d go to Lestallum and check in with Iggy, find out where the man had been and see if there was anything he could do to help. And who knew, maybe Ignis would know a thing or two about kids. Because if that little girl pulled through, she’d need someone on her side in this ugly dark world, and Prompto would be on her side if she’d let him.

He tied his bags down on the back of the Nifelheim machine and kicked it off, heading for Lestallum with a quiet hope for the future. The girl was safely in the medic’s capable hands and he’d found Iggy. Things were finally moving in the right direction. He’d catch hell for smoking and half the other things he’d done, and he still wasn’t talking to Gladio, but Iggy would know what to do. He always knew what to do. Prompto could catch up, get some advice, and figure out what was next while waiting for Noct to come back.

 

But he’d never ever forget the Gralea affair.


	13. Epilogue

Life had a way of upending on you when you least expected it. And Prompto’s life was thoroughly upended. He’d arrived in Lestallum, gotten word from Iris that Ignis was in the Leville, and things had gone a little strange since then.

Ignis had been in Tenebrae recovering from the effects of the Ring of the Lucii’s influence, and he still looked and sounded like hell. Prompto had decided then and there that he’d take care of Ignis and the little girl together… until he’d gotten word that she hadn’t made it. Curatives hadn’t worked.

And they weren’t working on Ignis either.

 

So there Prompto was, having climbed out the window of the room where Ignis was resting, smoking a cigarette and wondering what in the hell he was going to tell Noctis and Gladio if Ignis didn’t make it too.

 _Well, screw that shit,_ Prompto thought. _I’ll do whatever it takes to get Iggy safely to Noct’s side. Whatever that may be, as long as it takes. I’ll do it. I promise, Noct_.

And then Ignis made a wry observation about cigarettes from inside the room, and Prompto knew he’d been caught. He put the cigarette out, and headed back inside the room to keep his promises.


End file.
